This week was "the week after" ... the great Republican debate. Consensus seems to be that the "winners" were Cruz, Fiorina*, and Carson, Trump held serve, and everyone else lost. Looks like we're going to have to come to grips with Donald Trump, we can't just say "he's an idiot" and ignore him. I'm not surprised by Ted Cruz, of the professionals, he's the most professional, and of the conservatives, he's the most conservative. Ben Carson is an impressive guy, but I can't really see him as President. Fiorina I've written about; she's interesting, and might very well end up as the Republican VP candidate.

* Fiorina is especially notable because she wasn't part of the main debate, but the storyline seems to be that she won the undercard and is surging...

Check out this post, it's notable for having post-debate-survey numbers, but also for the disrespect shown by [liberal blog] Boing Boing (which I mostly like, but not for their politics).

I'm pretty surprised, as is [conservative log] Powerline, that Trump easily survived his strange comments about Megyn Kelly. I think it shows his strength. Scott "Dilbert" Adams says he is a Clown Genius: "As far as I can tell, Trump's 'crazy talk' is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an 'anchor' in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time."

Of all the Republican candidates, Fiorina seems most focused on taking the fight to Hillary Clinton. She asks What has Clinton accomplished? Good question.

* time was, I liked Bill Clinton better because of his smart wife. I thought she would fix healthcare. But no, turns out she wasn't that smart, didn't fix healthcare, and seems to have become less savvy all around. I will be shocked if she's our next President, in fact, I'll be shocked if she survives to become the Democrat candidate.

If I had to bet, I'd bet on Joe Biden, maybe with Hillary as VP. I'd definitely pay money to watch a VP debate between Fiorina and Clinton :)

The laws of economics haven't been repealed: Latest Seattle employment numbers. "The loss of 1,000 restaurant jobs in May following the minimum wage increase in April was the largest one month job decline since January 2009." There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Related: for a beautiful example of bogus progressive economic non-logic check out this flyer about Walmart. "Walmart costs taxpayers an estimated $1 billion per year subsidizing low wages and benefits." Get that? If only Walmart would pay their employees more, taxpayers would not have to subsidize their wages and benefits. Clearly that's Waltmart's fault, right ... It couldn't possibly be the government policies which allocate tax money to this purpose...

So ... greens grown in space are now on the Space Station astronaut menu. Excellent. It is no accident that The Martian is a botanist; think about it and you'll realize growing (and raising!) food in space will be a critical need. It is SO expensive to send stuff out of Earth's gravity well, that synthesizing it on the fly is well worth it.

This applies to all sorts of things besides food, too, like rocket fuel, building materials, and even the "air" we'll breathe...

Among the amazing pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, this one, of the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius. "Hubble can see astronomical objects with an angular size of 0.05 arc seconds, which is like seeing a pair of fireflies in Tokyo from your home in Maryland." This is not false color by the way. Click through to enbiggen amazingly!

From Engadget: Watch live as two ISS cosmonauts perform a spacewalk. Yeah, every part of that sentence is surprising, but remember, Russia is currently the only country that can fly astronauts into space. (I think the correct term is "EVA", however, technically a spacewalk only occurs on a surface :)

When you see these pictures, it looks like something from a movie, doesn't it? Except that maybe the spacesuits are bulkier in real life :)

In a NASA video, they ask: Why do we explore? "Simply put, it is part of who we are, and it is something we have done throughout our history. In “We Are the Explorers,” we take a look at that tradition of reaching for things just beyond our grasp and how it is helping us lay the foundation for our greatest journeys ahead."